Townsend, Tennessee - Fly Fishing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, East Tennessee and Western North Carolina

Welcome to the Fishing Report. It feels like December, 34 degrees this morning. The rooftops in town are covered with frost. The sky is a pure pale blue. It won’t feel like December this afternoon. The high temperature will be around 60 degrees. Rain is expected tomorrow the cold air will possibly create snow tomorrow night. Then, it is going to be cold for a while.

You best chance for decent fishing is today and tomorrow. After that the water temperature will dive. Flow in Little River is good right now, 295 cubic feet per second (cfs). Median flow for this date is 236 cfs. The water temperature at 8:00 am was 44.3 degrees. That number will rise some today.

Nymphs will work best in the Smokies today. I would use my standard Prince, Tellico or Pheasant Tail. I would have some big nymphs in my box. The brown trout are hungry. They are also hard to catch. You might see some surface activity. Blue wing olive dry flies would be a good choice if that happens. As the water warms today, the trout might be looking up so try a dry fly if the nymphs are not working.

Our little town will begin to see visitors arriving on Friday for the Christmas holiday. Lots of folks rent mountain cabins at Christmas and New Years. I can’t think of a better place to spend the holidays. I always spend them here.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitation is extremely light in the winter. If we get a good snow, there are plenty of people from the local community headed to the Park if the roads are open. Normally though, on these holidays, you don’t see many people in the Smokies. Hiking and driving around Cades Cove are popular during the holidays, but nothing like it is during Spring, Summer and Fall.

We will be busy this weekend through New Years. Our customers will most likely be staying in the area but not fishing. They will be buying gifts this weekend, gift cards and stuff they will be using in the Spring, which is not that far away.

I haven’t been fishing in a while. I’ve been mostly working. At night I have been tying Knuckleheads. I’m trying to build enough inventory to sell them online during the Spring and Summer. I would like to tie a dozen each night but that is not happening. Right now I’m averaging about 3 or 4 each night. I’m doing it for fun. I love tying flies but I have so many, I will never use them all. So, I tie this pattern in two colors for customers to use. It’s not easy keeping up with demand. But so far, it is still fun.

Wayne Waters, a freelance writer in Knoxville wrote an article about our store and us. It was published in the Knoxville News Sentinel on Monday. You can read it on the KnoxNews website by CLICKING HERE.

Wayne did a great job and I can’t believe how many people have responded to us either in personal direct conversations or online. Newspapers, especially this one reaches a lot of people.

Yesterday I got a call from a reporter from another newspaper. She is my friend Iva Butler who writes for The Daily Times. This is our local newspaper. She heard I took some pictures of one of the bald eagles that have moved into Townsned. We have a pair and they have been here about 3 months. I guess she plans to write a story. I sent her my pictures and told her to use them any way she wishes.

To me, having two bald eagles move into your town is a big deal. I can’t tell them apart but I’ve seen one three times. Now that the leaves have fallen, I look at the treetops everywhere I go. I see bald eagles occasionally when I’m fishing but I fish in the middle of nowhere, places you would expect to see an eagle. You don’t expect to see them in the middle of a small town.

Anglers have been telling me about some golden eagles that live on the French Broad River. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those. Stan said they are huge. Stan can spot a falcon a mile away. He is the first person who told me about the bald eagles here. He has seen them many times.

It’s me and Paula today at the shop. I’ll be working on the Knucklehead tutorial. This project was slowed down because I could not make up my mind on the width of our new website. These Knucklehead pages will be the first using the new size and the new drop-down menu. I finally made a decision yesterday and started re-designing these pages. Throughout the Winter, I will be re-designing about 30 pages and creating more. The new or refurbished pages will go up on the internet as they are completed, one at a time.